Summer Love

The Carefree Summer Fling Is Just A Myth (Here's What You Can Do About It)

Summer love is the stuff Hollywood dreams are made of. The idea of having a casual, carefree relationship full of killer sex, easy road trips and late nights out, one that will end without any issues, seems like something a team of writers might cook up and then laugh off as a rom-com joke. How is anything in life and love this fairytale? This easy? Spoiler alert: It isn’t. It never is. But that’s kind of a good thing.

Every year around this time, dating and sex advice sites just like this one kickstart the conversation about the ever-so elusive summer fling: “How To Secure Your Summer Fling,” “Get Summer Love,” and so on. And every writer’s advice is different. Some clueless fools even suggest that you should try to chat up women when they're jogging in the park or nudge you to do things like “show off your excellent beach bod” at any chance you can. Columns geared towards ladies are all littered with anti-clinger jargon: “How to forget him when the summer is done.” This way of looking at heterosexual relationships is, pardon the pun, dated.

Is there something about summer that actually makes people want to have more sex on the regular? Maybe it’s just because it’s sunny and we’re breathing fresh air, planning weekend getaways and our skin is crisp with ocean salt? We’ve been working out all winter so that we’re toned to the bone for the beach? Yeah. Right.

OK, so what if your life isn’t a B-movie from the goddamn '80s? What if, like me, you live in Los Angeles, a city that stays summer all year long, and the hottest months do nothing but make you crave air conditioning and a really strong Jim Beam on ice?

The summer fling doesn’t exist in the real adult world. How could it? When you're an adult with an adult job and adult responsibilities, those things don’t halt when June hits. The best you get is two weeks' vacation. Contract workers, school teachers, lifer university students and freelancers are the only ones who can truly have a “summer fling” — because they're the only people whose careers allow them a “summer vacation.”

The whole appeal about the “summer fling” is that it’s a relationship that we know has an endpoint. Going in, both parties understand that at some point one of you has to go back to wherever you came from (probably Cleveland) and playtime is over. All risk of a real commitment is lifted from the casual affair, and, apparently, you're both just free to have great, fun sex all summer and part ways effortlessly. This theory is great and it can work, but why do we need summer to have lasting casual relationships? Isn’t this just called dating or friends with benefits or anything other than a common-law marriage?

The “summer fling” implies that there's a clear understanding between two people that their relationship has an expiration date and everyone involved has checked the “Yes, I am OK with that” box. Instead of waiting for a season change to dictate your relationship for you, why don’t you do it yourself, by using your words, your actions and your feelings? By communicating to the person you are interested in the kind of thing you want? (See any of my other columns for cookie-cutter advice on how to do this if you don't know how.) My point is that we don’t need summer to do the talking for us: If you want casual, just be a human and make it happen no matter what the season. You know, since Tinder exists now.